How to Play the Pedal Steel Guitar

Transcript Hi, I’m Jonathan Gregg. I’ve been a musician most of my life. I play guitar, pedal steel and Dobro. I started with a guitar as a kid and played lots of rock-and-roll music, and ended up in some different original bands. I was fascinated with a pedal steel from the time when I first …

Transcript So practicing this instrument, what’s the best way to learn and what’s a good allotment of your time? I think probably the most important thing is to diversify in your acquisition of knowledge. Don’t focus only on one part of it. Of course, if you’re having a problem with that one part of it, …

Transcript You may want to know what kind of devices are commonly used with Pedal Steel, and what people have used traditionally. It’s really a matter of taste, but I’ll just show you a couple of the more common ones. Easily, the most common one is reverb. Here is what it sounds like without reverb. …

Transcript So what is the pedal steel guitars role in a lot of the stuff you might be likely to be playing on? It’s chiefly associated with country music, but it’s certainly not limited to that. But let’s just for the sake of argument stick to country music for a second, because that’s where its …

Transcript Minor scales, slightly more complicated than major scales but you can still, of course, do them. In the root position, you’re going to hit the eighth string, the seventh string, the sixth string which has already been lowered because you’ve got your right knee going left, lowering it a whole stet and then releasing …

Transcript Major scales, well the pedals will help you fill in the notes that you’re lacking in the major scale, given this that you have this instrument in open tuning, E ninth chromatic. So the simplest way to approach it is to start on the eighth string, which is going to be your root wherever …

Transcript Okay, finally now, how about augmented chords? Now, as I already described, the diminished chords were sort of when you squashed the chord down by flatting the third and flatting the fifth, reducing the distance between the root and the fifth. Augmented chords work in the opposite way. You start with a major interval, …

Transcript Okay, diminished chords. Now, as you probably know already, a diminished chord occurs when you’ve got a minor chord where the fifths have been also flatted and a dominant seventh has also been flatted. Right there you’ve got four notes. You’ve got three picks. You probably may or may not to actually even play …

Transcript How to play sixth chords. Basically you can use the A pedal. In a G chord, the sixth note is the E. So you just get that by hitting the A pedal. Another possible sixth chord is two frets below the A and B positions. These are going to be your main positions in …

Transcript Seventh chords. Okay, so these are dominant seventh chords, the kind you need when you’re playing in a one-four-five progression when you’re at the five, that’s always going to be a dominant seventh chord. It’s a very strong chord, it’s used to, very strong pull back to the root chord. You have several ways …

Transcript Okay, how to play minor chords. Well as you probably know, a minor chord is just a major chord with a third lower, so if you have, one- three-five-three-one. Okay, so you need to lower the third half step. In this case basically I’m just lowering the six string, and I’m pressing the B …

Transcript Okay, how to play major chords. Well, you’ve got different positions that are available to you in several different ways. Because you’ve got ten strings, you’ve got quite a lot of horizontal action going on here. Starting with the tenth string, you can have a grip that’s, a grip is basically a hand position …

Transcript How to play double stops. Well, you basically play two notes at a time, and whatever combination that is, is entirely up to you. You can keep them close together, or further apart, then combinations thereof. So, really, it’s just a matter of using your two fingers together or a thumb and a finger. …

Transcript Okay, how do you play single notes? It’s a little self-evident that you strike the strings with your picks and you make notes, but you want to strike them cleanly. The thumb goes forward, the fingers come toward you. You don’t strum. Pedal steel is not a strumming situation the way a guitar is. …

Transcript Okay. What are splits? Well, splits are something that you have available to you when you’re working on the same string in different ways. A perfect example is if I’m raising the B string with my A pedal I’m raising it a whole step. If I’m looking to get just halfway there the best …

Transcript How do you use the knee levers on a pedal steel guitar? Well, you use them in the same way that you use the pedals, basically because they change, as the pedals do,they change pitch of the strings. So it’s a question of understanding what role these various alterations can play and how best …

Transcript The volume pedal; the old timers called it the expression pedal, which is an interesting way of looking at it. Of course, what it basically does is raise and lower your volume level. It’s no secret. It’s just like the volume control on a guitar or on your radio, if you still have one …

Transcript The C pedal. This is easily the least used of the pedals but it has its own special qualities. Especially in combination with the B pedal. By itself you hear it, it will raise the B and E pedals each a whole step. So by itself you can give it a nice, it’s sort …

Transcript The A and B pedals together are probably the most characteristic sound of pedal steel guitar. That’s pretty much where it lives, isn’t it? And so all you’re doing is the A pedal, is raising the B note to a C sharp while the B pedal raises the G sharp note to an A. …

Transcript The B pedal. Okay. What is it and why? The B pedal raises the G sharp string a half step. So, it goes from G sharp to A. And by itself basically it creates a suspended chord. Suspended because as the name indicates it really, really wants to go back to where it started. …

Transcript How to use the A pedal. The question is well of course to use the A pedal you strike the A pedal. It raises the B strings. In other words the fifth and the tenths strings. The question of course is what do you get when you do that? All right? Well, you get …

Transcript Okay, now, about tuning the knee levers. As we discussed previously with the pedals, everything goes on over here when it comes to tuning the things that change the pitch of the strings. So, in this case, we’ve got five knee levers, and the first one we’re going to work on is the one …

Transcript Okay, what’s next? The G sharp strings. Okay, there was the third and the sixth so let’s have a look. Okay. This is in tune. And what we want is for it to be at just about 441. So smack dab between the first and second lines, between 440 and 442. There’s no line …

Transcript How do you tune the pedals? Okay, well what we have here is the tuning mechanism for the pedals and the knee levers. We’ve already discussed how to tune the strings. That’s over here. You use the tuning pegs to tune the strings to the tunings that we’ve previously discussed and that gives you …

Transcript Okay, how do you tune this thing? As I said before this is an E9th chromatic tuning. What does that mean? Well it means that it’s tuned to an open chord of E9. It has two E notes, two G sharp notes, two B notes, two F sharp notes, one D, and one D …

Transcript Okay. So how do you tune this thing? As I said before this is an E ninth chromatic tuning. What does that mean? Well, it means that it’s tuned to an open chord of E ninth. It has two E notes, two G sharp notes, two B notes, two F sharp notes, one D …

Transcript How do you use an electric tuner? Okay. Well, it’s actually pretty straight forward. You plug into the tuner. This is a battery operated Boss tuner. This is the kind I use. I recommend it. You turn it on. With this Boss, you go all the way over. You want the chromatic setting. This …

Transcript A copedent very simply is just what the setup is of the pedals and knee levers and what is the role that each of those does. This guitar is set up in a very common, typical setup, and in this case, my copedent involves three pedals, which is very, very common for this type …

Transcript The fretboard of a pedal steel guitar. Well, in the case of this particular guitar that we’re working with, this guitar is tuned in an E tuning. So, if you’re a guitar player, you’ll be relieved to know that G is still on the third fret, A is still on the fifth fret, B …

Transcript So, what is blocking? Blocking is just a way of making sure that the notes that you are playing don’t just ring out beyond their desired shelf life. And there’s a couple of ways of doing this. You obviously want the strings to ring out. But you don’t want them to ring out like …

Transcript Okay. So how do you place your fingers and hands on this instrument? Well, the tone bar you should be holding in your left hand. Something along these lines. Sort of nestled between your first two fingers with your thumb supporting it. I bend my finger a little bit here and sort of press …

Transcript Okay, How to use the tone bar. This is a stainless steel tone bar made by John Pearse. It’s probably eight or ten ounces it’s, I think eight ounces. It’s a good solid piece of metal. You want to make sure that your tone bar does not get dinged around. It’s amazing how even …

Transcript Okay. So how do you use the picks on a pedal steel guitar? Well, first of all you want to make sure that the picks are snug on your fingers. It’ll take a while to get used to them if you haven’t used them before. They’ll seem too tight. They’ll seem too loose. They’ll …

Transcript Okay. So, how do you use the finger picks? Well, first of all, you should use finger picks. There are a few cases of people playing with their fingers and whatever suits you is fine really, but finger picks, they produce a louder sound and overwhelming majority of steel players use them. The great …

Transcript What kind of steel should you look for, if you’re looking to buy one? Don’t buy a beginner model. Don’t buy anything that’s a student, or a starter, or anything of that nature. These are really not good quality instruments, and they will prove to be more frustrating in the long run. It’s just …

Transcript So, strings, what kind of strings should you use. There are two kinds. You’ll have either nickel wound or stainless steel wound. This doesn’t apply to the plane strings because they’re stainless steel anyway. The winding, of course, applies to only the wound strings. Very subjective, it’s just a matter of taste really. There’s …

Transcript You may have read or seen the word push-pull to describe particular kinds of pedal steel guitars. And what is that? Well, it involves a technology and mechanical savoir faire that I personally don’t have. But it basically describes a type of technology device by the Emmons Pedal Steel Guitar Company in the 60’s …

Transcript So here you are with your brand new pedal steel guitar and you just opened the box and what are you going to to? Wow. What is this thing, anyway? Well, let’s start out by figuring out how to put it together. Here’s the rods for the legs and the rods, and here is …

Transcript So, where can you get a pedal steel guitar anyway? Probably not at your local music store. Pedal steel is a pretty boutique-y kind of instrument. It does not have wide enough popularity to have really proven to be worthwhile for the big, big instrument companies. You may have seen Pink Floyd videos with …

Transcript Okay. The parts of a pedal steel guitar. It doesn’t have much in common with a guitar. But you do have tuning pegs and you have strings. You have ten of them, not six. So, here we have the tuning pegs. This is the nut and you can see these little rollers here. They …

Transcript This is a Pedal Steel guitar and why’s it called a Pedal Steel guitar? Well, first of all, it’s not a Steel Pedal guitar. The pedals are not made of steel. Originally, steel guitars were simply what you see at the top here, with nothing else. Just a neck, tuning pegs, a pick-up, some …